Originally published at Notes from the bunker…. You can comment here or there.

Coming to a street near you?

“At least three people have been killed in the Greek capital as protesters set fire to a bank during a general strike over planned austerity measures.”

No doubt there will be people who cheer and say the ‘banksters’ are getting what they deserve and that it should be a warning to the ‘greedy bankers’ in this country. I’m reminded how everyone seems to hate lawyers but the minute they slip on someones sidewalk or the get arrested for DUI they suddenly see lawyers as wonderful people. Sure, Greece’s situation has some parallels to the American situation  but there are some big differences. Same thing…everyone hates bankers until they want to buy a house or a car.

Some moron scrubbing toilets for $11 an hour lies on a mortgage application and gets the bank to loan him $300k on a house, he discovers he can’t resell it in 6 months and make a cool $50k on the deal, lets the house go into foreclosure, gets sued for the money and this is somehow the banks fault?

Anyway, my point is that in this country (usually) protests tend to be pretty non-lethal. Yesterday was the anniversary of the Kent State shootings that left four college kids dead. The outrage was palpable and these folks are lionized as victims of the turbulent times they lived in. On the other hand, its worth noting that through bombings, shootings, and other methods the various protest groups in the 60’s killed a lot more people in this country than the Guard at Kent State did.

I suppose, though, that in this country we have plenty of non-lethal protests because when they do turn violent or lethal they are quickly renamed ‘riots’.

I’m all for people protesting. If youre unhappy with something it is your right to stand on a street corner and yell your lungs out about it to passerby. Good on ya mate. But the minute you spraypaint a building, break a window or throw paint on someone you’ve stepped out of your constitutionally-granted free speech bubble and are now fair game for a knuckle sammich.

They say our economy is improving but I dont see it. Some folks will be looking for someone to blame…’banksters’, ‘big [pharma/oil/brother/sister]‘ , ‘corporate America’ or anyone else that they think is somehow responsible. At first it’ll be small incidents here and there but theres no guarantee that some bunch of black-clad ‘anarchists’ (usually people who will have a change of heart quite quickly about anarchy when they discover that in their dreamy anarchistic utopia they’ll probably get their asses kicked pretty regularly) won’t start setting fire to McDonalds and Starbucks thinking that it somehow will promote ’social justice’.

Interesting times we live in. This is why I  stopped leaving the house without a gun quite a while ago.